Silence
by cherrygurl1225
Summary: He could not break her silence.


**Tru Calling: Silence**

He refuses to break her silence. He refuses to break the wordless slumber she lets herself sink into. He refuses to break a part of her, to see her as a hollow ghost in the crevices of her own shell.

He just lets her be silent. His mind does not want to propel backwards to the exact moment she had fallen silent. He does not want to think about it.

So he just watches her. He watches the way she walks into the hospital room, the pungent disinfectant staining the walls and tables around her not seeming to stir her senses. Her body moves slowly, the hard metal of the chair does not make her body flinch as she sinks into it. Her silence has deadened her senses. Her silence has created its own numbing pulse, one that throbs without purpose or pleasure.

Her silence made his stomach ache with pain and nausea as persistent thoughts pound incessantly inside his mind.

He wants to help her. He wants to say something. Say anything. Something that would snap her out of this numbing state of being. Something that would lift her from the hopelessness and despair that clung to her heart and bleed profusely into her soul.

But he couldn't do anything. Couldn't help her. Couldn't awaken her soul enough to bring Life back to life. Back into reality. Back to him.

He watches her as she stares at the small and seemingly lifeless body of a little girl on the hospital bed beside her. She reaches out and takes one of the little girl's hands into her own. He sees tears stream down her pale cheeks, now drained of their once rosy pink color. She would stay by this bedside for hours – forever if he let her, but eventually he would come in and gently pull her away.

"_We have to go home now. You need to get some sleep, Tru. We'll come back tomorrow."_

And they would. Though she barely could seem to rest. Not her eyes. Not her heart. Not her soul. Everything was out of balance. She could not rest until she knew. She could not rest until she knew her daughter – their daughter – was going to be alright. She could not rest until she had an answer. When she could not get an answer and when her questions about the critical condition of her daughter went unanswered, she fell into a spiral of unwavering silence. She would not allow herself to speak again until she knew something. Until she had an answer.

Now, amidst the discordant cacophony of the universe, she remained suspended in silence. A ghost in her own shell of existence, but not life. Just living. Just breathing. Maybe not even being.

Days later, an answer finally did come. Though it was an answer she did not want to hear. She thought maybe she could deny it. Maybe the doctor was wrong. Maybe her daughter had been misdiagnosed. In her mind, she kept hoping she hadn't heard the doctor's piercing words.

Her daughter would never awaken from the coma that she had unknowingly slipped into only a few months before. It had started as a fever, but grew progressively worse from there and when the little girl's fragile form could no longer handle the stress of the fever, she fell unconscious and into a coma.

After the doctor had given them the horrific news, he left the grieving couple alone to be with their daughter. To spend a few last moments with her as the last tiny spark of their daughter's life would soon be no more. Neither of them could bear to see their daughter in such a state of existence, the thread that balanced precariously between life and death now almost tangible. Or at least tangible in the heart, in the emotional pain of both mother and father. Once the thread was cut, whether by fate or by something else, the last remaining breath of their beloved daughter would dissolve into nothingness.

Life turned to Death. She then sunk into his open arms, her glistening tears staining the creases of his wrinkled shirt. He just held her. He mourned with her. He even cried with her. And as they held onto each other tightly, he whispered a soothing _shhh _into the wavy curls of her soft brown hair.

But even now, he dare not break her silence.

_Fin._

**Author's Note: **This fic actually was a combination of two ideas that I had and I decided to use both of them in one story. I've been writing other non-fanfic related things lately, but when these story ideas came to me, I just couldn't pass up the opportunity to get it written! Reviews are always appreciated!


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